Hello, everyone. I am back after a long absence (caused by a rush towards milestone at work). I have one of those "classic" problems, but there are some peculiarities that prevent me from devining the cause of the trouble: A Mandrake 6.1 machine that I configured in March to run telnet and ftp services is now only intermittently accepting connections. This machine worked fine up until late last week. It is not behind a firewall. I have been telnetting in from an NT box behind a firewall. Again, this has worked fine for three months. Now, when I try to log in using this same telnet and firewall configuration, my telnet client informs me that the connection failed. I cannot ftp either. Microsoft's command-line FTP tells me that the connection is refused - there is not even any IP information given. Now, here is where it gets bizarre - When I telnet into my mail server (a separate machine, also running Mandrake 6.1) with the NT client from behind a firewall, I can log in just fine -- now, when I telnet over to my failing box, I can log in without trouble! So you think it might be a DNS issue, huh? Then explain this: Once I have done this, it becomes possible to log into the failing box using the NT client behind a firewall. So I can't log in until I log in from the neighbouring Mandrake box -- once I've done this, I *can* log in -- and suddenly ftp works again, too. Now, if I log out from the neighbouring Mandrake machine so that only the NT machine is logged in, I can keep working for a short time, then *paf* - it disconnects me. Once again it is not possible to log in again. Now, there may have been some idle time that caused this, but the point is that it won't let me log in after booting me off -- unless I go through the rigamarole of logging in over my Mandrake box first. I thought it might be tcpd, but the logs show no evidence of a connect attempt, even to inetd. It looks like inetd is on crack or something. Then I thought it might be the firewall: I cannot connect from a Linux box behind the firewall But I cannot connect from a Windows box *not* behind a firewall The hostname on the firewall router is correct -- and it was working up until last week (there haven't been any modifications to it). I have one more theory that I am now testing - I suspect that apmd is on the blink or something, though I can't be sure why it would start giving problems now. I have killed apmd - and so far it is possible to log in to the machine from the firewalled NT box without trouble. I want to give it 12 hours and see if this problem recurs. The following things *have* changed in the last two weeks: The firewall router was rebooted (that doesn't explain why people not behind a firewall have the same problem) There was a power failure in the room housing the two Mandrake boxes (they are not UPS'ed, but I haven't found any evidence of damage yet - they rebooted on their own without trouble, and they are surge protected) Since encountering the problem I have updated my netkit-base to netkit-base-0.16-1mdk, with no luck. I used tcpchk to make sure my tcp configuration wasn't on the blink. This problem is very peculiar indeed and I would love some help with it =) Stephen PS: Not all of my messages are making it onto the list. Anybody know why?
